The Tanselle Syllabi

The cover of Tanselle's Introduction to Bibliography: Seminar Syllabus; the fleuron is from Ptolemy's Phænomena (Cologne, 1537).

G. Thomas Tanselle’s Introduction to Bibliography: Seminar Syllabus and Introduction to Scholarly Editing: Seminar Syllabus are comprehensive guides to the literature of these two fields, including suggestions for basic reading and chronological lists of the writings on specific topics. They have been published in hard copy (as substantial paperback books of 370 and 257 pages respectively) by Rare Book School’s Book Arts Press since 1990 (for the Introduction to Bibliography) and 1998 (for the Introduction to Scholarly Editing). Hard copies of the latest version of each, dated 2002, may still be purchased from Rare Book School; as of early 2009, through the generosity of their compiler, they are also available for immediate download below.

Each syllabus here is a single PDF file that may be accessed by clicking on either “Introduction to Bibliography” or “Introduction to Scholarly Editing” below. Each one is searchable, and any portion of it may be printed out. If, rather than searching for a name or topic, one wishes to go to a particular section, one should first look at the table of contents (pages 3-9 in the Introduction to Bibliography and pages 3-7 in the Introduction to Scholarly Editing) to see the overall organization and to select the relevant section. One may then page-down or scroll to the appropriate page or use the search function (note that in some cases the same combinations of subsection numbers and titles exist in more than one of the nine major Parts). For a more detailed account of the scope of these syllabi, see the preface to each (page 10 in the Introduction to Bibliography and pages 9-10 in the Introduction to Scholarly Editing).

Download the syllabi

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